Budget deficit sets March record

Martin Crutsinger

Published
7:00 pm CDT, Thursday, April 9, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Treasury Department said Friday that the budget deficit increased by $192.3 billion in March, and is near $1 trillion just halfway through the budget year, as costs of the financial bailout and recession mount.

Last month’s deficit, a record for March, was significantly higher than the $150 billion that economists expected.

The deficit already totals $956.8 billion for the first six months of the budget year, also a record for that period. The Obama administration projects the deficit for the entire year will hit $1.75 trillion.

A deficit at that level would nearly quadruple the previous annual record of $454.8 billion set last year. The March deficit was nearly four times the size of the imbalance in the same month last year.

Nearly $300 billion provided to the nation’s banks and other companies to cope with the most severe financial crisis in seven decades has pushed government spending higher.

decade ending in 2019.

The administration said it remained confident its forecasts for declining deficits over that same period could be achieved. But private economists have faulted those estimates for relying on economic assumptions they believe are too optimistic.